Obama raises possibility of change at the Fed

President Barack Obama suggested that he was likely to nominate a new Federal Reserve chairman later this year, saying in a television interview aired late Monday that the current chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, had “already stayed a lot longer than he wanted or he was supposed to.”

Obama praised Bernanke's leadership of the Fed, which has mounted an aggressive campaign to revive the economy over the last several years. His second term as chairman of the central bank runs through the end of January.

“Well, I think Ben Bernanke has done an outstanding job,” Obama told the journalist Charlie Rose on PBS. He added later, “He has been an outstanding partner along with the White House, in helping us recover much stronger than, for example, our European partners from what could have been an economic crisis of epic proportions.”

The president avoided a direct question about whether he would consider reappointing Bernanke.

Janet Yellen, the Fed's vice chairwoman, is widely regarded as a leading candidate. She would become the first woman to head the Fed or any other major central bank.

Other possible candidates include two former Obama advisers, Timothy F. Geithner and Lawrence Summers, and Roger Ferguson, former Fed vice chairman.